Animals

It soon became apparent that we will come across alot of animals in South America that will keep us entertained. When first got to Trujillo and tried to use the family´s microwave we realised that it was hard to see the time properly as the numbers were partially obscured. I asked Tatiana what it was and she answered “es solo las cucarachas”. When we looked closer we realised that it was indeed cockroach legs and antennas that were obscuring the display, those in the door cavity were pointed out as well. Tatiana thought that the really amazing thing was the cockroaches that live in the fridge and don´t freeze! As got to know the family´s flightless but expert escapologist parrot I thought a record of the animals we come across will have to be kept.

The first animal on this page is the Viringo you see above. A member of the ancient peruvian breed of hairless dogs. One of the ugliest breeds I have come across but without canines I don´t think they can do much harm.

The photo above is of the family´s new parrot. He arrived in Trujillo about a week after us and has been developing his escape strategies ever since. Delicias’ husband,Jonny, brought him back from the jungle personally. He proudly explained how he gave the parrot a sleeping tablet, put him in a little cardboard box and hid it in the car to get it through the police checkpoints that make sure noone takes animals out of the jungle.

The parrot was quickly named Aurora and put in a tiny cage. Aurora’s wings are heavily clipped so after a few days he was released from the cage and allowed into the courtyard. For a few days he observed the way the land laid, particularly the five meter walls surrounding it, and began putting the finishing touches on his plans. He decided to make a break for it on the day when everyone in the house would be pre occupied: the day Delicia would give birth. On the appointed day he waited until there were no Peruvians left in the house. Once a bunch of gringos were the only people sat in the courtyard he leapt from his perch to the base of the bourganvilla with much flapping of cropped wings. As we turned around to watch he quickly climbed up five meters of bourganvilla stem, using his beak to grasp the stem and allow him to jump his feet up. He covered the five meters in about thirty seconds. He climbed onto the top of the wall and sat recovering.

The first part of the plan had gone perfectly. The tourists cheered and I ran into the house to find someone in the family, I found Carmela and we soon found a stick and attached a choclo (white maize) to the end of it. If I stood on a chair I could get Aurora to eat the choclo but he had no interest in coming down. This was the halfway point and he was just refuelling. After a while Carmela made it clear that she had to go out and it was my responsibility to get the parrot down. I soon realised that the parrot would only come down once he was hungry enough and could see food at the bottom of the bourganvilla. I sat down to wait.

Within an hour Jonny had returned from the hospital to report that he had a brand new baby son and was going back to the hospital with Walter. When he realised that the parrot was at the top of the bourganvilla his plans changed and he resolved to get it down right away. He decided to go for the classic macho male approach and removed the choclo from the end of the stick. He began trying to knock the parrot off the branch he was perching on and onto the stick. The parrot was unsurprisingly not prepared to climb onto the big stick being wielded by a man and repeatedly hitting the branch he was sat on. he began to climb until he was just beyond the reach of the stick. Jonny then went to get a ladder. He balanced the laddrer ontop of two chairs and got me to try to hold it as he climbed up. As the realisation dawned that he still could not reach the parrot he hooked the stick arond the base of the branch that the parrot was perched on and began to shake it as hard as he could. I desparately tried to hold the ladder steady on the plastic chairs as it jumped around. Aurora hung on for his life and began squawking fit to burst. Walter began running in small circles and shrieking and his dog followed him barking.

Despite the chaos in the courtyard the parrot managed to make it onto another branch higher up and we had to admit defeat. Jonny climbed down and sat trying to catch his breath. Before I knew it he had gone. He was on the balcony above and in a last gasp effort began throwing stones at Aurora, hoping to literally knock the parrot out of his tree. This final effort was clearly damned as when the hail of rocks began the parrot climbed higher, away from the trials of the courtyard below him. As Aurora finally made his escape into the neighbour’s garden Jonny grabbed the cage and enlisted their help to catch the errant bird.

Unfortunately he was soon recaptured and Jonny shot off to the hospital. The following day Aurora laid low licking his wounds and working out a new scheme. The next day he climbed up the mango tree rather than the bourganvilla. This time we just waited and when Aurora got hungry he did climb back down. For the next week he experimented climbing up one tree, moving around the canopy and climbing down another. He continued this pattern for a week until four days ago he finally made a proper break for it. He disappeared over the wall into the neighbour’s garden and never returned. Walter goes into the courtyard every night and whistles to Aurora. He claims that the parrot still whistles back but I am not sure whether to believe him.

Above is the view that greeted us as we approached the Paracas Islands by boat. They are dark lumps of volcanic rock sticking out of the Pacific ocean off Southern Peru. These rocks are a predator-less haven for seabirds. All the time you are near the islands you can see vast flocks tracing patterns in the sky as they move between nest and fishing grounds. As the boat drew closer to the rocks the noises of all the different animals hit us and soon the smell of the guano rushed at our senses. All the time our eyes were trying to see which animal was which and taking in the bizarre world in front of us.

The animals that really captured the imagination were the seals and sealions that thronged everywhere: in the water beside the boat, on the beaches and clambering onto any rocky ledges they could find to bask in the sun.

On the beaches we watched the enormous males putting their heads back and roaring so loudly that their entire vast bodies would appear to shake with rage. If this failed to settle their disputes then they would rush across the pebbles to clatter into one another. The females seemed to have a far more relaxed view of the world as they basked on top of the rocks waiting for the men to settle their petty differences.

Finally I feel that I need to put up some of the pictures of the monkeys that we keep coming across in South America. They are kept in the strangest of places: generally tied to a large tree with a long chain and a harness. The first time we came across one it was in a restaurant by the shore of a beautiful reservoir. The restaurant was owned by a bus company and was used as a pit stop during long journeys. As we climbed off our bus there was a large spider spider monkey right in front of us. We started playing with him and were amazed to see the way that he used his prehensile tail to grasp anything he wanted to hold, the last few inches of his tail even had a leathery pad, like you see on dogs´paws, to aid his grip. We fed him peanuts and he would come over to us whenever he wanted some more. Eventually someone else wandered over and offered him a bottle of coca-cola. He immediately became very excited, grabbed the bottle and drank the lot. He then sat for a second and soon started jumping all over the tree. He came back down to the ground after a few minutes and began demanding more from the people who were there. We offered him more peanuts but he no longer had any interest in them at all, we even tried handing them to him but he would just throw them down on the ground in disgust: he had the prospect of a far more exciting food. He then began hitting the empty coke bottle on the ground and literally screaming like a spoilt child in the hope that he would get some more coke. It was a crystal clear lesson in the power of modern processed foods.

The monkey above is a capuchin monkey one of the commonest monkeys in South America. They are very friendly and the more time we spend around them the more we realise just how much they act like small children. The way that they play with objects or interact with people is just like a three year old child. The one above was fascinated by Erika´s glasses; first of all touching them and making sure that she did have eyes behind them then taking them off her and then trying to put them on himself. As you become friends with these monkeys they want to touch or hold you and in the picture below is one who just wanted to sit on my back and relax. When we arrived at the hotel where he was kept, his cord was all caught up in the tree so he was trapped in one spot held fast by his harness. I climbed up into the tree and managed to untangle the cord and got him down to where there was some food. I became his instant best friend. Indeed in the picture below we could almost be brothers.

So after six months in Bolivia it is the animals of the jungle that really stand out in my mind. The most amazing ones are, unfortunately, also the ones that are hardest to photo. The ants that you see everywhere, clearing paths across the forest floor that radiate out from their nests, the most amazing image I have of them was a group of leafcutter ants who were stripping a flowering tree; the ant highway was full of ants jostling one another to be the first to arrive back at the nest carrying one of the tiny flowers they had taken from the tree. The butterflies are another of the animals that are everywhere in the jungle, although the most common are probably the enormous blue ones, they come in all shapes and sizes and a staggering array of colours including some that have sections of their wings that are see through. The problem with trying to photgraph them is that they just never stay still but seem to be constantly flitting around just ahead of you. That is until you discover their shameful secret: they love shit. I know it doesn´t fit with our image of a butterfly, but whenever you would see a cloud of butterflies up ahead of you you would find that at the base of the cloud was a fresh turd. Below is a photo of a group of butterflies making the most of their favourite mule byproduct.

There were other insects in the jungle like the biggest and brightest caterpillars and centipedes I have ever see. As well as the smallest and dullest, but the amazing thing about the jungle is the incredible diversity of flora and fauna that you find there. The variety is just mind blowing. Everywhere you look you will see things that you have never seen before, wonder why you didn´t notice it last time you looked and how it can live crammed in next to so many other competing species. The king of the insects has to be the praying mantises, they sit perfectly still, apparently in divine rapture, just waiting for some noisy interloper to crash in and recieve his lesson.

With all the insects that are there the jungle is a paradise for frogs and toads. At night the air is alive with the calls of the different frogs, every now and again in the day you come across toads of gigantic proportions sheltering in tree roots or dayglo frogs trying their best to get away from you. The night time sounds intrigued us so much that one night we asked our guide to take us down to the river in the darkest part of the night to see if we could find some of the frogs that we could hear so clearly. It turned out to be a much harder task than you would imagine. We headed down to the river with our torches and began climbing around over the rocks, trying to find the source of the calls but didn´t seem to be finding anything. Our guide soon told us that most of the frogs hide under leaves when they call. If you remember how big many of the leaves in the jungle are and imagine how many fall to the ground, searching under them is no mean feat. We soon began to find frogs but were disappointed when we realised how disproportionate the sound and size of the frogs can be. We would turn over leaves from which huge deep calls were eminating and find frogs barely more than five centimeters long. We were assured that soon or later we would find a big frog we just had to keep trying. Two hours later we were still trying and getting reasonably good at identifying which small frog went with which huge call. Finally we found the promised frog and watched him for a while. After ten minutes of silence we realised that the larger frogs do not call.

The rivers in the jungle are the easiest places to see animals as they come down to the water to drink. They are forced to leave the dense jungle where an animal could be only two meters away from you and you would still have no chance of seeing it. When you are in the jungle you are made aware of the animals around you more by the sounds and smells that they create than by actualy seeing them. Once as we were walking through the jungle our guide told us that there were wild boar around as he could smell them. We couldn´t really make out any smell but as we moved along the path we soon realised that there was a very strong musky smell in the air, as if we were walking past a tramp who hasn´t washed himself or his clothes for a year. Our guide then asked to move as slowly and quietly as we possibly could. As we continued along the path we began to hear noises of what appeared to be large animals all around us: heavy breathing, movements in the undergrowth and gutteral noises. As the smell became overpowering and the noises alarming, the boar became aware of our presence and all at once the entire group began charging through the jungle to get away from us. Their feet hammering the ground and their powerful bodies forcing their way through the plants as they screamed to each other in alarm. The noise of ten to twenty boar racing to get away from us was terrifying. Suddenly one crossed the path in front of us, the hair on his back raised straight up, his short legs going ten to the dozen and tusks glinting in the sun, he surged across the path and into the undergrowth on the otherside of it flattening a new path as he went. It was only a glimpse but left quite an impression. Compare this to the calmness of the rivers that are the main paths in the jungle. You cruise along in a narrow boat watching the animals on either bank. Amazing sights such as terrapins balancing on logs, resting their heads on one another as they soak up the sun, drift past as dragonflies flit past you and fish jump out of the water after them.

In the water as elsewhere it is the sheer variety of animals that is so astounding. Along the banks you see enormous terrapins, a huge variety of birds washing or perched in the trees and alongside them all kinds of mammals including these capybaras; the largest rodent in the world.

Guarding the banks motionlessly are the Caiman which sit and wait for food to come their way. When they do surge in sudden action it is a sight to behold. Our most memorable view of this was when a troop of monkeys climbed down through the branches of a tree until they were sitting just above the surface of the river. They sat and studied the water carefully for some time, once they were satisfied there was no immediate danger they began to move down onto a branch that was even closer to the water one by one. From here they could hang by their tail and feet as they stretched their mouths down to the surface of the water and began to drink. Our vantage point on the other side of the river enabled us to see the caiman slowly floating toward them. As the caiman got closer the monkeys still suspected nothing, whilst it still had the element of surprise the caiman made a sudden sideways lunge and its jaws rose well clear of the water. Fortunately the little monkey was quicker and managed to jerk itself up onto the branch. As the caiman´s jaws crashed into the branch the troop of monkeys erupted into screams and shot up into the treetops. The caimans are some of the ugliest creatures you will see in the jungle, despite their amazing skin, but the power of their timeless features is in their ability to raise an involuntary shiver every time you see them.

It is the monkeys in the jungle that held our interest the most. The family groups that you see drifting through the treetops above you really are something special. In our camp in the jungle we proved to be lucky. Living in the trees around the camp was a spider monkey who had been brought to this part of the jungle by our guide when her parents had been killed by hunters near his village. She had remained forever indebted to him for this act of kindness and whenever he was staying in the refuge she would come and visit him. As we were eating breakfast in the mornings we would become aware of her long limbs drifting around the trees above us. She would circle slowly around the treetops far above us, as we admired the unfeasibly long limbs that have earnt the spider monkeys their name. Tripping from tree to tree she would make sure that there was no immediate danger and then come and sit in the roof beams of the hut where we were eating breakfast. Her ploy was to wait until the cook had left the kitchen, then to dash through the roof timbers and try to grab any food lying out on the surfaces. The cook has seen this trick before and would dash back whenever she heard noises in the rafters, broom in hand, to chase the monkey away. The monkey would begin screaming as soon as she saw the cook with the broom, who, in turn, would start bellowing at the monkey. This cachophony would only calm down once the monkey had retreated to the roof of the hut, where she could not be reached, to examine her spoils. The photo below is of Negrita, as she had been christened, being tempted out of the roof beams by our guide. She would sit on a hammock recieving gifts of banana and papaya before disappearing back off into the treetops (you can see her amazing slender hands next to the clumsy block of a human hand, although the leathery pad on the end of her prehensile tail cannot be seen as it is gripping the hammock).

Unfortunately in the jungle we also saw signs of some shocking guiding practices. As we walked through the pampas looking for snakes we came across the skeleton of a simply enormous snake. Our guide told us that these snakes normally died as a sad result of repeated handling by guides without ethics who would learn where a snake was hiding as it tried to digest a large meal and would go back with group after group picking up the snake and eventually causing it to die. An hour later we came across a group doing exactly that. The guide had picked up the snake and was moving it around as it woke from its digestive stupor. The guide looked as if he knew what he was doing and the animal did not appear to be in excessive pain. But when he handed it onto another member of the group to hold across his shoulders for a photo we suddenly realused how this could lead to the death of the snake. The guide passed it onto the largest man in the group and his fear of the snake caused him to grip it so powerfully that you could see his fingers pushing deep into the side of the snake and each time it moved he would grip it even harder as he jumped with fear. It was eady to imagine the damage being done by this kind of handling.

Unsurprisingly some of the most colourful animals in the jungle are the birds. They are not really the most photogenic however, as they have a healthy mistrust of man. generally by the time you have turned your camera on they have already disappeared far into the tree tops above you. When you come across birds that are used to people, the colours that you marveled at as they disappeared from view,  appear to be only the starting point for the intricate plumage of jungle birds.

In houses near to the jungle keeping a macaw, like the two above, or any of the other smaller jungle parrots as a pet is as common as keeping a dog. As you walk along the streets you can see them peeking out from many of the houses and gardens. Usually they are not caged but have their wings clipped and roam around free searching for food. The hostel we stayed at in Santa Cruz displayed the usual Cruzeña need to be bigger and better than anywhere else in Bolivia by having two pet toucans (this Cruzeña need to be bigger and better is most noticable in the boobs you see there, I have never seen so many obviously fake ones collected in one place in my life).

The toucans were the pride and joy of the hostel owner and were fed the very best peeled fruit from the kitchen. Despite their habit of biting the guests they were allowed to roam everywhere they wanted. My best memory of the hostel was watching these two birds making their way slowly around the reception, making bizarre clicking noises at one another and  having a good look at everything and climbing from chair to chair. Gradually they climbed their way slowly up to the top of the desk and spent some time examining the register. They examined the book carefully, testing the edges with their beaks and walking all over it. Once they were sure they had reached the object of their search they proceeded to shit on it.